Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 25, 2014 4:04:54 GMT -5
Haunted Charleston
Indeed, from the time that England’s King Charles II rewarded eight loyal followers the coastal lands between the 29th and 35th parallels of latitude, this estuarial tangle of salt marsh, islands, meandering rivers and brooding forests draped in Spanish moss comprising the Low Country, has been a cauldron of conflict. Charleston, founded in 1680 on a thumb of ground jutting southward between the mouths of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, has somehow remained more or less intact as one war after another swept over it: the 18th-century Queen Anne’s War, a running skirmish with the Yamasee Indians, a virulent infestation of pirates, the American Revolution and a brutal British occupation. Charleston’s Fort Sumter is where the War Between the States began. How could anyone banish the agonized murmurings of so many lost souls?
Modern Charleston has expanded in every direction, sending municipal tendrils over to Johns Island, James Island, Folly Beach and northeastward. But that jut of land between the rivers, where old Charleston still lies, has been altered very little. The city still has cobbled, narrow streets, bounded by scores of buildings erected before the Revolutionary War and hundreds before the War Between the States. The great homes peer across the Battery at Charleston harbor today much as they did a century ago. A clipper captain landing here at the turn of the 21st century would find it much as it was at the beginning of the 20th, overlain by the same veil of invariant etiquette and culture. Now, as then, the visitor would note its abundance of old churches and dub Charleston the Holy City, as it is called today in the Low Country. Of course, churches mean graveyards and graveyards mean ghosts and every weathered stone in every cemetery in those close-walled repositories of the dead has a tale to tell.
Manifold Hauntings. The fact is the Holy City has been a magnet for the unholy – spirits who can find no rest on the far side of the grave. Few venues could be more attractive to ghosts, who abhor change, flee modernity and bustle, avoid the light and make their nests in locations and buildings of the past. Perhaps this antique core of Charleston was designed with the spectral residents in mind and perhaps there are so many reported sightings, sounds and other spectral encounters that the more discriminating residents have to do a good deal of winnowing. After all, you just cannot believe everything you see or hear. “We get calls all the time about different ghosts all over the place,” explains Julian Buxton, co-author with Ed Macey of The Ghosts of Charleston and Other Macabre Ventures and owner of Tour Charleston, the city’s preeminent purveyor of nocturnal ghost walks. “Our criteria are that people have similar experiences over and over again. Otherwise, we’d have all kinds of stuff.” Buxton’s ghost tours follow a different route every night, steering visitors from headstone to headstone, haunt to haunt. But the experts have their favorites, shades they call the real ghosts of Charleston.
The Headless Soldier. Down on South Battery, where large, big-windowed mansions erected a century ago stare across the seawall at the confluent rivers, a former carriage house has been converted into the Battery Carriage House Inn, with rooms decorated to transport the visitor back 150 years in time. From here, looking out over the estuary at the ghostly silhouette of the USS Yorktown, it is not difficult to imagine the harbor crossed by Yankee men-of-war, standing the blockade that the fictional Rhett Butler ran with such apparent ease in Gone With the Wind. But spooky intimations of lost ships are not the only specters here. In fact, the Battery Carriage House Inn (pictured above) claims two. One is known as the Headless Torso, a wraith that occasionally appears, groaning miserably. In life, he was a member of a Confederate Army detail sent to blow up all the munitions stored along the Charleston seafront and spike the cannon so they would not fall into the hands of the monstrous Gen. William T. Sherman, who was fast approaching. Something went seriously wrong, however, and the young soldier’s head was blown away in the explosion – along with his chance of eternal rest. The other Carriage House Inn specter is an amiable young fellow who died on the premises long ago and may be seen strolling the grounds by night and, once in a while, by day. He is best known for his penchant for crawling into bed with female guests. Of course, he immediately takes his leave if they protest, hence, his nickname: “The Gentleman.”
Doomed Doctor. Just a block or two away, the premises at 59 Church Street are haunted by Dr. Joseph Brown Ladd, a pensive young physician from Providence, Rhode Island. Defending the honor of a Charleston woman in 1786, Ladd was wounded in a duel with a drunken associate by the name of Ralph Isaacs and died of complications and fever. Few believe Isaacs intended to kill the popular doctor and Ladd’s specter seems to bear the living no ill will. Generations of families occupying the Church Street house, built in 1730, have reported seeing and hearing the doctor, who appears on the staircase as a protective spirit in times of crisis and stress. There are reports that he also whistles, thus, his moniker, “The Whistling Doctor.”
A Colonel’s Revenge. One of Dr. Ladd’s contemporaries haunts the Old Exchange Building, where Charleston was once centered – a building even has a dungeon, pervaded, as dungeons invariably are, by the emotional imprints of prisoners who died there. But a Revolutionary patriot is the principal ghost in the Old Exchange Building and Col. Isaac Hayne attained this ethereal position with his life. After British forces occupied Charleston in 1780, the Redcoats were at pains to discourage further resistance by the rebels. The city was secure, but guerrillas like the wily “Swamp Fox,” Col. Francis Marion, nibbled at supply lines and harassed British forces pretty much at will. The invading soldiers captured Hayne and used him as a lever to crack the American spirit. Given a choice between swearing allegiance to the Crown and death, Hayne opted for the latter. His captors let him contemplate his own coffin for 48 hours in his prison cell, then hanged him for all to see. This served only to infuriate his fellow revolutionaries and prompt them to fight even more determinedly. And Hayne himself was not quite finished either. The tread of his oak-heeled cavalry boots is still heard in the building’s Great Hall and he is believed to be responsible for a host of other unexplained phenomena in and around the Old Exchange Building.
Graveyard Ladies. Charleston’s many church cemeteries are veritable hives of ghostliness. Sue Howard, who died in 1888 of complications from a pregnancy that produced a stillborn child, haunts the graveyard of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church on Church Street near Queen. Near the anniversary of the child’s death (June 10, 1888), she appears as a cloaked figure leaning over her lost baby’s grave, which is adjacent to her own. On the night of June 10, 1987, a Charleston photographer accidentally captured her on film (above), producing what many regard as one of the finest paranormal photographs ever taken. Mary Bloomfield haunts the cemetery of the Unitarian Church off Archdale Street. Known as the Woman in White, she appears as a luminous white form, which witnesses have described as an angel. Mary died suddenly in 1907 and on the same day – perhaps at that very moment – her husband died at sea of yellow fever. He was buried in Boston, but his spectral widow in Charleston still awaits his return.
The Duelist. A young man was wounded in a 19th century duel in St. Michael’s Alley in the heart of the old city. His friends carried him into a house on the corner of the alley, up the stairs and placed him on a bed, where he soon expired. Ever since, people have reported hearing his final moments: the sounds of a body being dragged up the stairs, then dropped on a bed. St. Michael’s Episcopal Church later purchased the house and converted it to a rectory and the phantom duelist, perhaps uncomfortable around clergy, is said by some to have wandered off. However, Julian Buxton, an expert on Charleston’s ghosts, is not so sure the spirit has gone away. It may be the clergyman in residence is just reluctant to acknowledge the rectory is haunted. “I think,” Buxton says, “he is still there.”
Poogan’s Porch. Poogan’s Porch in downtown Charleston is a restaurant with a certain reputation. Poogan was a Yorkshire terrier that spent much of his life dog-napping on the porch. The little fellow passed from one owner to another until he died of old age. Some believe the Yorkie haunts the premises to this day – he has a gravestone in the yard, after all – but he isn’t the top ghost at the establishment that bears his name. Before the building was transformed into a restaurant, it was a private apartment building. Zoe St. Amand, a Charleston schoolteacher, lived there, very much alone. Now, long after her death, she apparently still inhabits the building. She does not appear as a transparent wraith, but as a very old woman (some put her age at 95), who shyly takes a seat in one of the less conspicuous booths. Evidently, she prefers not to be noticed, but restaurant staff often see her, as do diners and guests at Mills House Hotel next door. Indeed, some employees have gone elsewhere after meeting Zoe. This timid visitor from the Other Side is, however, much too diffident to cause trouble and vanishes at the slightest hint of contact with the living. Most people believe she haunts Poogan’s Porch in the same manner in which she lived – as a lonely lady yearning for human companionship.
Alice and the Grey Man. Not all South Carolina’s ghosts are centered in, or even near, Charleston. For example, the area near The Hermitage (above) at Murrells Inlet on Pawley’s Island, some 75 miles north of Charleston, is haunted by the melancholy spirit of Alice Flagg. When Alice was 16-years-old, a turpentine dealer gave her a diamond engagement ring, but her family considered the young suitor unacceptable. Alice was summarily packed off to boarding school in Charleston, where she became deathly ill of fever. Her brother, Dr. Allard Flag, traveled to Charleston to bring his sister home and while he was treating her, discovered the diamond ring which she wore on a ribbon around her neck. He took the ring off his delirious sister and threw it away. Alice succumbed to her illness and was buried at All Saints Waccamaw Episcopal Cemetery. To this day, mysterious flowers appear on the grave of Alice Flagg and many say they are left there by the ghost of her long-dead lover. Meanwhile, Alice wanders near her home in search of her lost engagement ring.
The Grey Man of Pawley’s Island is probably the most well-known ghost in South Carolina. He appears as an anthropomorphic cloud of sea mist and those who have seen him say he seems to be wearing military headgear. In life, according to legend, the Grey man was a young British officer who was overtaken and killed by a terrible tempest from the sea as he hurried to warn his fiancée’s family of the approaching storm. It is believed he continues to warn those living on Pawley’s Island when a deadly storm is about to hit the Carolina coast. People begin looking for him when the Atlantic hurricane season begins in late spring. To those who see the Grey Man, his message is succinct: A major storm is coming; flee while you can. One man who claims to have seen the Grey Man just before Hurricane Hugo smashed into the South Carolina coast in September 1989 took the spectral warning to heart and spirited his family off the island. After Hugo passed, he returned to find the hurricane – or, as some believe, the Grey Man – had miraculously spared his vulnerable coastal home.
Source: Carl A. Posey, Discovery Travel.